


What the Embers Know

by Ael_tRlailiiu



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 20:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ael_tRlailiiu/pseuds/Ael_tRlailiiu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ellen Brandt did not die in Rose Hill, TN. She and two other surviving Extremis subjects find allies where they can and set out to forge their own future. This may require some violence, but they're good at that.</p><p>From the look of things, will end up being AU to "Agents of SHIELD."</p><p>NOTE: This story should, alas, be considered abandoned. Just ran out of steam. Sorry!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flicker

**Author's Note:**

> Ellen Brandt is Stephanie Szostak's character from Iron Man 3. She's an existing character in the 616 universe, with ties to Man-Thing and Dr. Strange, but I've played pretty fast and loose with that. The other two I made up.

Ellen Brandt regained consciousness on a scorched and cracked piece of parking lot behind a shuttered convenience store. The ringing in her ears faded as she rolled to her feet. Muted sirens and the mutter of a crowd replaced it. That probably wasn't good, but a glance around showed her safe for the moment. The last bits of her body sorted themselves out. She touched her face; the scar was still there. Time to get moving..

She lurked on the store roof just long enough to determine that both Stark and Savin were gone, along with the car. Either Savin thought she was dead for real, or stranding her was a comment on her screw-up.

Fuck that; lot of good he'd been as back-up. She stole a pick-up and some new clothes at a town fifteen miles south of Rose Hill. She picked up a pre-paid phone two towns later and left a message at HQ, then drove on. Hardly anyone else had been through such an extensive regeneration, and it turned out that regrowing most of your body left you tired and hungry. Nothing she could do about the latter. She listened to country music and gospel stations and slept in the truck when she couldn't keep her eyes open any longer.

No one called her back. Without any other option, she continued on in the morning. She stuck to the back roads through silent brown fields and woodland; the truck had no doubt been reported stolen. News came as dribbles on the radio, mostly in Spanish. The raid in Miami, the attack on Air Force One, the disaster at the _Roxxon Norco_ , the Vice President's arrest—at every successive report she slammed her hand harder against the steering wheel.

Shit shit _shit._

Plastic cracked under her final strike. So much for that plan. She pulled over and started making calls.

*

At the only hotel in Cairo, Georgia, Ellen tapped a code on the door. It opened, and she slipped through.

“Everything looks clear outside. Is this all of us, then?” She looked at the other two.

Mei said, “I think everyone else is dead. Haven't heard a word.” She had been in California, keeping an eye on the aftermath of the Malibu Point event and carrying on with AIM work, and missed the main excitement. For several heartbeats the only sound was the TV in the neighboring room.

Renata said, “Fucking _Stark._ Motherfucking _flying death robots_.”

No one could really argue with her, or with the emotion behind her words. In lieu of making plans, they held a wake.

“To Aldrich Killian,” Ellen said with a raised bottle. “Thanks, I guess. May you never find rest.” Though maybe she ought not say such things, given her history. Her oma would have disowned her.

They drank to him, and to all of the others. That took a while.

“To the fire,” Mei said, and the other two nodded. The bottle went around again.

“To getting back up again,” Renata said. Falling off that shipping container into the ocean had likely saved her life.

Mei said, “I kind of liked Eric.”

Ellen shrugged. “He was an asshole.”

“True. Good pilot, though.” She ought to know. That had been before the crash, the nerve damage, and the years of desperation. Killian had told them all the same thing: _you can have back all that you los_ t. It had been close enough to true.

“Yeah.” Silence for a while.

Renata said, “Think they're looking for us?”

Mei nodded. “They've got all the pieces. All of the records. Even if they're not specifically searching for _us_ , they'll be keeping an eye out for people _like_ us. We can't stay here long, and I think we ought to stick together.”

“No argument here. Whattya say, Spooky?”

“And do what? Knock over banks?” Ellen looked at the two of them, at deceptively small and pretty Mei with her Seattle accent and wings in her eyes, and then at Renata, solid as the trucks she used to work on or the Texas soil where she had been born, bereft of her usual smile tonight. They had all gone in with AIM willingly, looking to have some of their own back from a country that had used them up, seen them broken, and given them nothing with which to go on. They didn't know how to be criminals, though.

“I can think of at least one better option,” Mei said.

“Maybe better, maybe not.” Ellen had been the oddball in the Extremis crew, the one with no armed forces background, but she _had_ worked for the government. Hence the nickname. “They'll try to screw us, guaranteed.”

Mei drew her mouth to one side in a sort of facial shrug. “Won't be the first time.” Then she grinned. “We'll screw 'em back. We do this?” She put her hand out, Three Musketeers-style.

Ellen shook her head, but covered it with her own. “I guess it's worth a try.”

*

Maria Hill sat down at the table. She set a thin tablet in front of her, but its screen was dark. She left it that way and stared at Ellen for a few seconds before speaking.

“Assault. Impersonating a federal agent. No arson charge, because as near as we can tell, Stark is the one who actually blew the place up. Conspiracy to murder the President. That business in Greenville—”

“We didn't start that.”

“And now you,” she ignored the interruption, “are asking for your job back.”

“No. I'm a lot more useful now than ten years ago. And I've got some friends.”

Hill braced her elbows on the chair arms, laced her fingers together, and stared at Brandt. Maybe she was wondering about the scar. Would she believe the story if Ellen told her? That she had been marked that night, in a way that losing her arm later hadn't even approached? Maya had chalked it up to variations in how the individual body reacted to upgrading.

“I'm going to ask you some questions. Your answers will be recorded.”

Ellen nodded.

“Before we do that, tell me what did happen in Greenville?”

“Some guy asked Renata if she wanted to have his anchor baby.” Ellen shrugged. “She's from Texas, things kind of... escalated.”

Maria raised a perfect eyebrow and tapped the tablet into life. “What incident in Greenville.” They got started. It went on for hours, after which Ellen was left alone for a while. The Atlanta SHIELD branch office wasn't large. She figured the building was surrounded by a tactical team already. She didn't remember what it felt like to be worried, to feel threatened. Perhaps she ought to try, but the warmth that lurked deep within her whispered reassurance... for a while. 

Before she could get too nervous, Maria came back. "If you and your friends want to do this, we're going to take a trip." 


	2. Flare

The elevator went down.

Mei said, “This may not be the smartest thing we've ever done.”

“Why start now?” Renata said.

It kept going down.

Ellen glanced at the impassive SHIELD agent who had accompanied them this far. “You guys have certainly come up in the world. Time was you couldn't even pay for more than one graduate student to help out around the place, now it's all Men in Black gear and underground bases. You know that gun's not going to do you any good, right?”

“This is your floor. Enjoy your stay.”

The doors opened on a hallway lined with numbered doors at wide intervals. Renata being Renata, she tried one as they walked, found it was open, and paused.

“This is a dormitory?”

Hill appeared from a doorway farther down. “We have to keep you three somewhere while we work on this. For safety reasons, this floor is empty. If everything goes well, that won't be an issue for much longer.”

Stabilizing the Extremis formula was top priority. Useful as their abilities might be, none of them wanted to end up as a random explosion somewhere. It had been a long and slightly nervous week on that account while the negotiations went on. Hill had assured them that it could be done, but she hadn't given them any specifics. Of Hill's boss, there had been no sign. Probably he had more important things to do. Very different from the old shoestring days.

The room turned out to be larger than expected, furnished as a living room with two couches, a coffee table, a TV, several surveillance cameras, and not much else. An open door suggested an attached bedroom.

It also contained one Tony Stark. He obviously hadn't been expecting Ellen; she gave him a grudging point for not stepping back. His glance at Hill promised payback; her expression remained stony.

Brandt smiled at him. “How's your girlfriend?”

“Just peachy. You,” he said with just the slightest emphasis, “had better hope she stays that way.” He looked from her to Mei and Renata. “This everybody? Let's get this done, then.” He placed a slim black briefcase on the coffee table.

“Our techs can take it from here,” Maria said.

Stark gave her an unsmile. “Because SHIELD has such a fantastic track record of keeping hold of things once you've found them, I'm going to say 'no' to that. I will happily borrow one of your trained medical personnel, but this doesn't leave my sight.”

Ellen intercepted Mei's curious glance and gave a tiny shrug. However unflattering her opinion of the man, Stark had no known talent for subterfuge. If he didn't trust SHIELD, well... that was interesting. This whole thing was a gamble on the idea that SHIELD would find them more useful tamed than eliminated.

Hill recognized either a fight she wouldn't win, or one she wasn't interested in having in front of others. “How long is this going to take?”

“Maybe a week. Don't fret, you'll have three stable individuals at the end of it. Physically, anyway.”

“Then get on with it.” She left the room. The door closed behind her.

Ellen hid surprise. Cameras or no cameras, and despite whatever suppressant tech had been hidden in the ceiling in case of flame-ups, Hill evidently wasn't worried that she and her friends might damage a SHIELD ally. Maybe this was a test. In Rose Hill, she had thought _He doesn't look dangerous._ He had broken her neck.

Now he looked disgruntled, but that was the extent of his reaction. The briefcase did a retina scan before he opened it. Ellen glimpsed a smooth interface pad and a cluster of slots under scattered packets of sharps and sterile tubing.

“That's an awful lot of needles,” Mei said.

“You people are hell to get a blood draw from. This would be faster if it was possible to hook you up to an IV for a couple of days, but turns out that's just irritating for everyone involved.” The wall screen blinked to life with their old AIM records. Solis, Renata. Brandt, Ellen. Li, Mei.

A jump-suited SHIELD tech arrived a few minutes later, and they did just that. The briefcase whirred and analyzed for an hour, threw a bunch of numbers onto the wall screen that seemed to satisfy him, and they got started. There were, indeed, a lot of injections, but there was also a lot of waiting while the computer digested the ways the numbers changed every time.

Ellen had braced herself for a long day, more on account of the company than the needles. She was surprised to find Stark quiet, though. He watched the data move around, fiddled with a laptop during down-time between test readings, and kept conversation strictly to necessities for the whole first day.

“That went pretty well,” he said at the end of the day, packed up and left.

“You feel any different?” Mei asked Ellen.

“I don't think we're supposed to.” She clenched her right hand, reassured by the ripple of light. They could burn their way out of anything they needed to. She had already checked the door, found it unlocked and not even guarded.

“Not a little freaked out about any of this?”

“I don't freak out.” She stared maybe a little too hard back at Mei.

Mei twitched a skeptical eyebrow and asked Renata, “How about you?”

“Been worse.” Renata shrugged. “Being underground kinda sucks.”

“Trying not to think about that.” Mei sighed, and the moment of tension passed. By prior agreement, they slept in shifts, but no treachery appeared to be forthcoming.

On the second day, no one much talked to anyone else. Maybe all of them were having second thoughts about what they were getting themselves into. Mei read and reread the scanty information they had available. Ellen paced and tried not to think about the past. By afternoon, Renata got bored enough to talk to Stark while he put together the next stage of the treatment. She wanted to know how things had played out at the mansion and whether his friend with the terrible fashion taste was single.

He blinked at her. “My friend who you tried to _kill_?”

“It was nothing personal.”

He shook his head and returned his attention to the monitor. “I'll let him know you asked, but he met a blonde at the medal ceremony. Pretty sure that was some kind of Air Force mating dance they were doing.”

“Damn. Why are all the cute ones Air Force?” Renata sighed.

Mei cocked a threatening arm. “Say what?”

“Hey, I just said you were cute.”

“If you ladies plan to throw down, I suggest taking it outside. And maybe waiting until we're done? Solis... You were Army?”

Renata nodded.

“What happened?”

“To me? Roadside bomb, five years ago. Piece of shrapnel hit me in the neck. Half an inch to the side, and I'd have bled to death. Instead, eighty percent paralysis, until... well. Funny old thing, life.”

“Can't argue with that.”

“Used a lot of your stuff while I was in.”

He didn't look up from the console. “So did they.”

“So what's in this for you?” Mei asked a while later. “Giving us a hand.”

“A handsome consulting fee.”

She snorted, but seemed to relax a little. Ellen couldn't bring herself to do the same. She felt out of her depth. Her previous work for SHIELD had been on such a different level that it might as well never have happened. Everything before Extremis felt like it had happened to another person. Who and what she was now, she wasn't always sure.

Three more days passed. On the following morning, they moved out of the underground barracks and into a large, heavily reinforced room where they could cut loose on a variety of targets and finally on each other, a full hour of all-out sparring that had them all grinning and exhilarated by the end. They left most of the place standing.

Stark seemed happy with the resulting data. “Right, then. Hey, Ivanova.” He tossed Mei a USB stick. “Looks like you're good to go. Give a ring if you start feeling hot and bothered, but only then.”

“Thanks.” She tucked it into her pocket.

“Ivanova?” Renata cocked her head, missing the reference.

Mei grinned. “Boom.”

“No boom today, please,” Stark said, packing up his precious case. “I'd hate to have to blow a weekend coming up with an effective containment system for you guys.”

Ellen saw Mei's eyebrow go up at that. A moment later she realized what he meant: he hadn't designed SHIELD's system, and he didn't think it would work against them. Ellen narrowed her eyes and watched him leave, wondering if that was some kind of offer, and if so what it could mean.

Mei said, “I kind of like him.”

Ellen rolled her eyes. “He's an a—”

“Yeah, yeah. So now what?”

A clack of heels in the hallway answered her. Maria looked them over.

“I suppose you'll do. Welcome to SHIELD. Your official designation is Strike Team Epsilon.”

“Boring,” Renata said.

“Official regulations for team naming conventions fill a three-inch binder. Unofficially, I don't care what you call yourselves.” She passed each of them a tablet. “Your plane leaves in half an hour. Equipment will meet you there.”

Ellen looked at the others in surprise. She had expected weeks if not months of organizational training before they were allowed to do anything. They shrugged. She swiped the tablet, and after an array of notices about how secret and important this information was, finally got to a single file.

Blonsky, Emil.


End file.
